And we’re back with inquiring minds and I’ve got a fun question to answer today (and a couple more that I didn’t get to before my holiday for the next couple of weeks). As always, if you have a question for me, feel free to complete the survey here or at the bottom of the post.
Do you refresh older posts and if so do you set aside regular time to do so?
Lynn Sheridan
This is such a great question and whether to refresh older posts is one lots of bloggers have to ask themselves as their blogs get older and they start looking back at some of those older posts and realise they’ve changed their minds, they’ve changed their writing style or format, or they just plain hate what they used to write. Also, a lot of advice sites about blogs tell you that you should update older content and not just have stuff sitting stagnant in the background of your site unseen and unread.
Personally I have a couple of different answers to this as I’ve been changing my approach around over the last twelve months (mostly my third year of blogging as prior to that updating old stuff didn’t seem that urgent given nothing was all that old).
For a little bit I was reposting some of my old anime series reviews. Things like Shiki that were reviewed in my first few months of blogging that had practically no views, used various layouts I’ve since retired on my blog, and basically just needed more exposure. However, my original approach was to actually duplicate post and make a new post with a heading explaining it was a repost with some updates.
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The problem I found with this approach is that some people had originally commented on the first review and their comments were essentially lost back with the first post, plus when searching my site for a review it was now unclear which review to read of the same series.
Plus, it meant the only posts getting any kind of update were full series reviews and I write a lot of other content.
I actually stumbled upon my current approach while trying to figure out how to use my twitter account more effectively and following a few steps in a guide I found just to see what happened. My regular followers may have noticed that in November last year I suddenly started having five tweets spread throughout the day promoting content on the site. These were tweets that were pre-scheduled and were to ensure that regardless of timezone something was coming out on my feed fairly regularly. And the experiment continued more or less until my trip in April and you may have noticed my twitter is currently a lot quieter just at the moment (but so are my views, amazingly this actually works at boosting exposure).
However, in the process of setting that up, I realised I didn’t really want the tweets to all be about the same content, and content coming out was already automatically announced on twitter, so I started looking at older posts that either had gotten a lot of attention or had been over-looked at the time of posting to promote on twitter. The standard approach was to pick a month and go through the archives and look at the posts and how they’d gone and what content was there that might still be relevant or interesting, or that I didn’t just want to keep hidden.
But, there’s no point trying to repromote a post that is still using an old signature or isn’t linking to newer content and then just reading some of my old posts made me wince. So before I schedule the tweet for a post, I revamp it. Sometimes it is just a formatting tweak, sometimes entire sections get rewritten. And then, once I’m reasonably happy, I promote the link to it.
As to a regular time, I was spending about two hours on either Sunday or Saturday selecting the older posts that I was going to promote next and then I’d chip away at editing them in small moments in between newer posts and the like throughout the week before setting them for promotion in the next week or so. It wasn’t an exact schedule as such but it was just something else to work on as part of growing the blog and so I made sure I gave it a little bit of my time each day.
That said, I’d love to know what other bloggers are doing in terms of refreshing older posts so please share your tips and strategies below.
Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James
I don’t know that I would ever revise a post… That breaks my philosophy that a post+comments is a coherent unit. If I ever did feel the need, I’d create a new post with the revised content and clearly link between them.
I think it depends on what you are revising. On revised lists I tend to explain what changes I’ve made and why, so where something previously was on the list or what was removed and what replaced it so the older comments still relate to the post even though over time new characters and anime have come out or I’ve watched older ones and revised my standings.
I think the only post I’ve refreshed since I first started Otaku Lounge back in 2013 is my Top 20 Anime one, which I make an intentional effort to update as necessary every year or so. I’m definitely not saying I still have exactly the same opinion on every single topic or about every single statement I’ve made about various anime over the past 6 years – it’s just that I don’t want to edit something in retrospect, as it makes me feel dishonest in a way. I think that if I saw a post I’d once made that I later violently disagreed with, I’d make a brand new post linking back to the old one, explaining how and why my thought processes changed over time.
That seems like a reasonable approach as well.
I don’t think I’ve seen any tips on updating your old content until now, although I understand why you would. The only time I update posts are unpublished posts that don’t reflect facts as of the time of posting or when I think I wasn’t clear enough in explaining something that needed to be clear…probably because I do the archival thing (that Scott said) with my blogging. (That’s assuming I haven’t deleted the entire blog and/or associated account, of course.)
That makes sense and a lot of blog content is kind of an in the moment thing anyway so isn’t overly relevant or interesting afterwards so whether it is updated or not isn’t going to make much of a difference at the end of the day (unless, as you said there’s something that actually needs fixing).
Thanks for answering my question. I love that you thought it was a fun question where as I’ve been fretting over the idea of having to refresh my older posts. I know that in reality I do, but that doesn’t make it any easier.
I’ve seen enough of my older posts getting views to know that not updating them is doing myself a disservice. I appreciate the argument for showing growth and improvement over time, but for someone finding your post for the first time they won’t see that. I am trying something with Heaven’s Lost Property where I’ve stated that I am rewatching and will find a way to tie in the new reviews to look back at what I said in the original.
Either way, it’s a lot of work, but the smart money says it’s worth doing. Anyhow, thanks again for taking the time to answer my question and have fun refreshing your old posts… 😁
I agree with your second point because some of my most frequently viewed posts are nearly a year old and if I hadn’t edited them and fixed them up, a lot of people would find my blog for the first time with one of those posts and I don’t think it would be the best foot to put forward to a new reader.
I guess I’m still not sure about whether or not I want to update posts or not. I know that everything that I’ve done has changed over the past few years and updating and cleaning them up is probably a decent idea, but it still takes up a lot of time to do it. Also, this blog is like a record for how all my work has grown and I don’t know if I want to erase that either.
That’s true about it being a record and changing an old post does in part erase the history. I used to worry about that and then I realise I have copies of a lot of my posts from 2017 on because of compiling the ebooks so even if I update a post I still know what it originally would have read as.
Yeah, refreshing posts is definitely a pretty smart move. Been looking into doing so, myself. Probably would do something a bit fancier, now, for a lot of the earlier full-series reviews that were essentially just me aimlessly rambling/gushing. It’s all part of growing, though. The need is somewhat handled with internal links, but not everyone actually clicks on those. Statistically, they’re only marginally helpful. So refreshing is totally a great option, albeit more work.
Internal links are a bit hit and miss. As you said, not a huge number of people click on them. They are still important and a guide for those looking for content, but it isn’t going to have a massive conversion rate.
I’ve been thinking about updating some of my old posts because my style has changed since I first started blogging. That, and I want to promote some series. After all, some of those brand-new series when I first started are now already several years old. Wow, time flies…
I know. Looking back at my posts from 2016 I sometimes am reminded of shows I watched and covered but literally haven’t heard anything about since.